Carrot Rice (Shirazi Style)

Shirazi Carrot Rice is a delicious and healthy meal made with fresh carrots, spices, and herbs.

Ingredients (for four people)

Rice: four cups

Carrots: four

Chicken meat: 250 grams

Onion: one

Rose water: half a cup

Sugar: 4 tablespoons

Almond, pistachio, and orange peel slices: three tablespoons each

Salt, turmeric, saffron, and oil: as per taste

Recipe

Soak the rice in cold water for at least one hour before starting the cooking process.

Boil the orange peel slices in water for 10 minutes to remove their bitterness.

Aash and slice the carrots into small pieces and fry them until they change color and then pour rose water into the pan. Add pistachio and almond slices to it along with some sugar. Mix these ingredients together a little on a low flame so that there will be a mixed taste in them.

Put the chicken in a pot of water, divide the onion into four parts and put it in the pot and then add a little salt and turmeric to it and boil it for at least half an hour until the chicken is cooked.

Fill a medium-sized pot halfway with water and put it on the flame until the water boils. Drain the rice, pour it into the boiling water, and let it boil for 10 to 15 minutes until it is almost cooked, and then drain it. Pour oil on the bottom of the pot and put it on the heat. When the oil is hot, use slices of bread or potatoes to cover the bottom of the pot and to make “Tahdig”.

Pour some of the cooked rice into the bottom of the pot and spread it so that it covers the entire bottom of the pot. Pour a layer of the slices mixture on the rice and pour it into the pot. Do this several times until the ingredients are used up. Of course, keep some of the slices for decoration. It is better to have rice as the last layer, but you can also put some almond, pistachio, and orange peel slices on the top layer.

Dissolve the ground saffron in warm water, pour a few spoons of it on rice, cover the pot, and then leave it on low flame to steam. It may take 45 minutes to an hour to steam the rice.

How to Serve Shirazi Carrot Rice

Serve the carrot rice in a dish and arrange the pieces of chicken around it. Then use some of the slices, that you had left aside, for decoration. You can reuse the saffron solution to color the rice.

A mixture of yogurt and cucumber, raw edible vegetables, raw onions, pickles, and Shirazi salad are also usually served with Shirazi Carrot Rice”.

It is said that there are 250 local dishes in the vast province of Fars province of Iran, similar to some of which cannot be found in any of the regions of Iran.